Guide To Grow Your Own Irish Potatoes

Home grown Irish Potatoes are simply the best - you can sprout them in early spring for a great crop this summer. 






Gardeners are now interested in growing a smaller quantity of vegetables, but a greater variety, covering a longer cropping time from early summer to late winter.  Potatoes can be grown even in the smallest section of soil and are ideal for growing in potato bags and pots to give you lots of great tasting potatoes which are easy to crop and care for.

Sprout early seed potatoes in March, indoors in a bright frost free location for planting out next month. Tried and tested varieties include:

Orla


 Colleen
 Sharpes Express
 British Queen

Good soil preparation is important, ideally ground where potatoes have not been grown in for several seasons - add some organic farm yard manure or organic chicken fertiliser as potatoes are hungry feeders and appreciate plenty of nutrition throughout the season.   

Horky's Tip: This season grow your potatoes in raised beds or potato planters and place on your patio to grow on this spring and summer – potatoes do great in raised planters and pots! 

Horky Tip: Remember to add organic chicken manure fertiliser when planting and add sulphate of potash during earthing up which will ensure a nice floury dry potato! 

At the end of the day, nothing beats a delicious home grown Irish potato.  You can enjoy them boiled, baked, chipped, roasted and fried!

Best First Early Varieties

Colleen

  • Super Irish bred variety with excellent flavour and fantastic large crops
  • Tubers are medium to large, short oval. Super flavour for an early variety
  • Creamy yellow skin, light yellow flesh and shallow eyes - good cropper
  • Resistant to tuber blight.
  • Moderately resistant to dry rot, black scurf and common scab.
  • Suitable for boiling, baking, steaming. It is a firm potato with good skin finish and does             not disintegrate on boiling. It is free from after cooking discolouration and enzymic browning. Highly Recommended!  
  • Excellent Irish variety bred for our heavy and wet soils. Ready to use in mid July.

Home Guard

  • Home Guard is a great cropper for west of Ireland growing conditions
  • Round large potatoes are produced in mid July
  • Super flavour and ideal for use throughout the summer period
  • Ideal for anyone looking to grow a nice waxy fleshed variety
  • Tubers are short-oval with yellow-brown skin which goes faint purple on exposure to light 
  • The flesh is creamy-white and the eyes are shallow.
  • The variety produces a moderately heavy crop in west of Ireland 
  • A larger crop is produced on moisture retentive soils
  • Tubers are medium size and uniform in shape and usually free from                      secondary growth irregularities  




Orla

  • Irish variety, excellent resistance to tuber blight and other diseases
  • Super variety with excellent large yield and 
  • This is an ideal variety to grow organically because it has excellent disease resistance
  • Tubers are oval to long oval with very bright and attractive creamy white skin
  • Light yellow flesh, excellent fresh flavour with a real taste of the first early potatoes
  • Shallow eyes – easy to peel!
  • Tubers are medium to medium large, ideal to grow in pots or tubs or directly out into drills
  • Excellent resistance to tuber blight – no need to spray for blight with this variety
  • Compact growth making this variety Ideal for planting in open windy gardens

Sharpe's Express

  • A well known and respected early variety - super high yields with an excellent flavour
  • One of the very best early varieties!
  • Tubers are pear-shaped, tapering markedly towards the heel ends
  • Pale yellow, shiny skins which goes faint red-purple about the eyes on exposure to light.
  • The flesh is creamy white or pale lemon and the eyes are shallow
  • The variety produces a good yield of small to medium-sized tubers a with very uniform shape
  • Tubers store well right throughout the summer/autumn. Established early variety.

Top Second Early Varieties

British Queen

  • This variety is over 100 years old and is still our number 1 potato variety for its             fantastic floury flesh, delicious flavour and high cropping
  • Super mid season variety, excellent flavour!
  • Tubers oval, slightly irregular, white skin, creamy flesh, shallow eyes
  • It is a late bulking variety with excellent floury flesh – one of the best dry fleshed varieties
  • Dry matter very high and eating quality is very good – lovely with a knob of fresh butter.
  • Lovely floury potato with a great, great taste. Horky's favourite floury potato. 
  • I recommend you plant this variety for its heavy cropping ability and its fantastic flavour

Records

  • One of the most popular second early varieties; great cropper, lovely cream yellow flesh
  • Stores well in late summer and autumn
  • Super mid season variety, excellent flavour!
  • Lovely eating quality, round, yellow fleshed and yellow skinned, very dry and                                   mealy after boiling   
  • Good for chips!
  • This variety is used for making potato crisps
  • Good resistance to powdery scab.
  • Uses: Boil/Bake/Roast/Chip!